How to support Planned Parenthood as Congress works to defund it - Blurred Bylines

The most visible genocide in history continues as Israel drops bomb after bomb on Palestinian families while they starve in refugee camps, schools, homes, and hospitals. The Lancet, one of the highest-impact academic journals in the world, estimates Israel has killed more than 186,000 Palestinians since October 2023. Carpet bombings, deliberate starvation campaigns, and snipering of children have compelled Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the ICJ to accuse Israel of committing genocide.

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House Speaker Paul Ryan tries his best to smile in this August 2012 file photo. (Wikimedia Commons)

Last week, House Speaker – and grown man who looks like a 4-year-old too shy to show his teeth when he smiles – Paul Ryan announced that Republicans will try to remove all federal funding for Planned Parenthood.

And now that congressional Republicans have largely unchecked power and an apparent vendetta against female autonomy, they appear hell-bent and fully capable of defunding Planned Parenthood.

Republicans in Congress have been trying to gut the women’s heath care provider for years, but now they can take real steps to do it and have already begun the process.

WHY THIS MATTERS

Here’s a friendly reminder of all the services Planned Parenthood offers to patients:

The above 2014 graphic shows the percentage of all services used by Planned Parenthood patients. (Planned Parenthood Services).

If the Republicans in Congress get enough support to defund Planned Parenthood – which is increasingly looking more likely – then women’s health care and the ability to access contraception, STD testing, cancer screenings and more are headed for the chopping block.

And for the love of all that is holy, federal funding to Planned Parenthood does not cover abortion.

The GOP is not saving unborn children from a gruesome fate as some party members often describe in detail. What they’re doing is cutting off health care to millions of women, who statistically, wouldn’t have even gotten an abortion from Planned Parenthood in the first place.

Contraception prevents abortion. There’s no way of getting around that very basic biological fact.

So to argue that defunding this organization is somehow protecting women is one of the biggest lies that somehow refuses to go away, in spite of countless public documents proving otherwise.

If a total defunding of Planned Parenthood does come to pass, women in low-income areas would be hit hardest, according to an analysis by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office:

“The people most likely to experience reduced access to care would probably reside in areas without access to other health care clinics or medical practitioners who serve low-income populations.”